Dreaming (12 page)

“Perhaps you could bring him something to eat—bread, water, something.” She leaned toward the smuggler and lowered her voice. “I believe that then Richard might stop sulking.”

“I am not sulking.”

“Oh.” She spun around. “What do you call it?”

He glared at her, then at Gus. “I call it hell.”

“You’re quibbling over words because you’re angry at Gus and at this situation. And probably hungry. I understand.” She looked at the smuggler. “He is usually a perfectly wonderful man. He acts as if he doesn’t care about anything, but he does. Why, he saved our lives . . . Gus’s and mine. Yours too. He did put out the fire. Isn’t there some saying that there is nothing more feared by sailors than a fire at sea?”

“Aye, but since last night, some of the men might be arguing that a fire aboard ship can’t be as bad as a woman.”

“I’d suggest, then, that you throw us overboard,” Richard said, still looking at Gus. “Him first.”

Letty
watched Richard tentatively. “I do believe he needs to find his sense of humor again.” She swung back around to the older man. “He is very witty, you know.” She paused, then asked, “What is your name?”

The man crinkled his eyes suspiciously, and his gaze darted back and forth between Richard and her. “Why do ye want t’ know?”

“Because it would be easier to converse, and I can’t very well call you ‘
Phelim
’ or ‘
Philbert
.’ Since you all look so alike, I daresay that people must call you by the wrong name constantly. And if I address you by your family name, then that would be the same as your brothers, Mr. So and So, and any one of you could answer, now couldn’t you? Of course you would all answer to the same name, so you could all answer at once. I imagine that must be terribly confusing, mustn’t it?”

“Probably no more confusing than this conversation,” Richard said under his breath.

“Are you confused . . . Mr. . . . ” She stopped and turned toward the man.

The musket hung forgotten from his hand and his mouth gaped open. “
Phineas
,” the man answered, trancelike.

“Oh, truly? I had a great uncle named
Phineas
.” She glanced from
Phineas
to Richard. “He was the brother of an earl, just as you were. But now you’re not, because you’re earl, but before you were—his brother, that is. He was so terribly interesting.”

Richard looked up and asked, “My brother?”

“No,” she said. “You aren’t listening very closely.”

“It wouldn’t help if I were.”

She looked at him glowering and gave him a smile. He didn’t smile back. She sighed. “Now where was I?”

Richard just gave her a telling look.

“Oh yes, I remember. We were speaking about my great uncle
Phineas
.” She took a breath and looked at the smuggler. “He has the same name as you do.”

Phineas
was scratching his head.

“He had very large ears—which was strange, because he studied frogs.” She looked from one to the other.

The men exchanged one of those male looks that said they didn’t understand. Richard was silent for a moment—probably the count of ten, like her father.

She waited expectantly.

He cast a quick glance at
Phineas
, who was stunned into silence, then he looked back at her and waved a hand in capitulation. “Fine. I’ll bite. Why was that strange?”

“Because, silly, everyone knows frogs don’t have ears.”

There was a huge, silent pause. And Richard finally laughed.

The silly Earl of
Downe
drank his third cup of smuggled brandy and contemplated the auricular structure of amphibians.

He stared into his empty tin cup and asked himself who at Boodles would lay high stakes on the idea that frogs were deaf. Next he calculated how much blunt he could win on the odds of the actual existence of a band of smuggling triplets. It was just the type of rake-hell foolishness that had always angered his father.

So Richard had partaken, making certain he was prominently involved in whatever foolishness his father despised. He had played the rake well, had even, on occasion, created enough of a spectacle to ensure that news would travel home swiftly and with lavish and vile detail.

No one had defied the old Earl of
Downe
. Except his second son. If the earl said sit, Richard stood. If he said eat, Richard starved. If he said no, Richard did it anyway, and usually right in front of his father.

The earl wanted a bishop for a son.

Richard wanted to be a soldier.

Not that he had anything against God, he just didn’t wish to spend his days returning stray lambs to the fold and writing sermons for mankind to sleep through.

He had told as much to his father, then with brutal honesty added that having a bishop for a son didn’t necessarily ensure the father’s place in heaven. Their subsequent shouting match had almost brought down the two-hundred-year-old walls of Lockett Manor, while leaving an even higher wall between father and son. One that couldn’t be breached.

Richard had always created battles because he thrived on conflict. In retrospect, that must have had something to do with his determination to follow the drum.

As different as he and his father were, they were both stubborn bastards, and when in the same room both were primed for battle. This particular battle had gone on for years.

Time had changed nothing. The earl had staunchly refused to purchase a military commission.

Finally, seeing no other way to defeat his father, he set out on a four-year path of blazing sin—assurance that the Church of England would never recruit him but instead pray heartily for his black soul. He learned he could defeat his father by destroying himself.

He stared now into his empty tin cup, his mind caught in a past he wanted to forget. He reached over and tipped the brandy barrel, refilling the cup. He heard the rustle of skirts and looked at
Letty
.

When he’d last glanced her way she’d been asleep, curled into a ball, her face resting peacefully on her hands. She had looked . . . innocent.

He had asked himself how long it had been since he’d thought about anything chaste. The answer made him feel soiled. So he’d refilled his cup and tried to drown the feeling.

But now she stood a few feet away, her hands clasped in front of her, her expression a little tentative. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“About Gus eating your food.”

He shrugged and took a drink. His stomach was full—of brandy.

She moved closer. “How is your arm?”

He glanced down at the wound, at the idiotic way it was wrapped in white petticoat lace and tied with a fluffy bow. His blood had long since stained the lace a dirty brown. The symbolism didn’t escape him. “It’s still there.”

She sat down next to him and leaned against the crate, straightening her skirts again. She shifted and wriggled and fidgeted.

He did his best to ignore her by swilling back another cup.

“What are you drinking? Brandy?”

“A little destruction.” He gave a mock salute and laughed bitterly, then made the mistake of looking at her.

Her expression turned serious. “Why do you do that?”

He finished the brandy in angry silence and set down the dented cup, then shifted slightly, bringing his face
intimidatingly
closer to hers. He pinned her with a hard look. “Because it makes me feel good.”

She drew in a breath and her eyes widened, but to her credit she didn’t move.

Foolish, naïve chit. He felt as if he held her heart in his hands. He didn’t want to be handed any hearts.

Some selfish part of him felt the intense need to tarnish her innocence. Because seeing all that shining virtue only reminded him that he had none.

“I like things that make me feel good: strong drink, hard rides across the moors.” He lightly touched her cheek. “Debauching innocent girls.”

“And shocking people,” she added, her face scant inches from his, her expression showing no intimidation.

He could smell the scent of lavender lingering about her, clean and sweet . . . and pure. It triggered something inside him. He reached out with sudden fierceness and gripped her hair tightly until her head tilted back.

She flinched.

His mouth closed over hers, hard and demanding. He intended to do exactly what she’d accused him of: shock the bloody hell out of her.

This was no gentle meeting of lips. He forced hers apart with his tongue and filled her mouth, catching her small gasp of surprise. He slid his hand inside her bodice and cupped one bare breast while he pressed her down and down, until he’d pinned her beneath the length of his body.

He kissed her harder, with anger and intensity and some elusive thing he couldn’t name, some pure emotion that was both passion and violence.

She wriggled a hand free and he waited for her to pound his back with her fist, to grip his hair, to instinctively fight him.

Instead she stroked his wrist with soft and gentle fingers, then slowly lifted his hand from her breast and placed it on her shoulder, where she held it in place with little more than a soft and stroking touch.

It was so quiet, so tender a reprimand, that he froze, overcome with a sudden sense of shame. He stared down at her face and knew with sudden clarity that he’d sunk to a new and vile low. He was so jaded and used to self-destruction that he’d tried to destroy her.

He moved off her so swiftly that his brandied brain saw nothing but a blur. He fell back against the crate, drawing up his knees and resting his arms on them.

He stared at his shaking hands, his breath coming hard and fast. He heard her sit up and felt her watching him for the longest time.

“Why?” she finally whispered.

He turned, feeling inexplicably bitter and still so very angry at himself, and at her for being who and what she was. “You’re the one who seems to have all the answers. You tell me why I kissed you.”

“You misunderstood. I didn’t mean
why
did you kiss me. I meant why did you stop?”

Chapter 7

Letty
waited for his answer and watched Richard try to control his emotions. He was livid. But aside from anger there was an aura of something he seemed to be fighting. She could read it in his face, and it was so powerful that it overshadowed his usual crust of anger.

She was used to his anger. Anyone who knew him was well aware of the fact that, of late, the Earl of
Downe
was either angry, cynical, or drunk. But there was something else there, something uncontrolled.

His hands shook with it. She wondered what it was he worked so hard to hide, and she searched his face for the answer. She found nothing but a look so scornful she wasn’t certain how to react.

His look didn’t change when he said, “You should have hit me for doing what I just did.”

She cocked her head. “Why would I ever want to hit you?”

“Good God. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

It would have been kinder if he’d slapped her. She stiffened.

As surely as if his hand had left its mark, her face heated and flushed red with humiliation, forcing her to look away. Any joy born from the magic of his kiss faded into nothing but a deep quivering feeling of disgrace.

Her throat tightened, and deep within her chest, where her heart and happiness had been but a moment before, there grew a fresh shame so painful she clutched her belly.

For the hundredth time in the last twelve years, perhaps the thousandth or more, she wished her mother had lived. She stared at the floor, because she didn’t think she could look him in the eye and not cry.

Whatever she was, she was because she had grown up mostly alone. She’d had the best education her father’s money could buy, yet there had been no guidance, no life lessons taught other than the ones she had learned her way—through mistake after mistake, despite the fact that most of those mistakes had initially carried a wealth of good intentions.